Hiram Percy Maxim, originator of quite a few strange terminologies, such as the Rettysnitch, is often reported as the originator of the term, "Lid" - meant to describe someone who, through poor operating practice of some sort or other, would put a "Lid" on communications taking place among a typical group of operators.

But, as these things go, the actual truth may be long lost to lore, tradition and plain old story tellin'...

The best way I know not to ever be branded as a LID is to do a lot more listening than transmitting, then follow what you hear the majority of others doing and how they do it when you go ahead and transmit. In other words, if you don't hear the majority of the others doing it, then don't do it yourself either.

If you like to tune up on a rare DX station for a couple of minutes to make sure you have it perfect, you might be a lidIf you call and call and call on the rare DX station frequency even though you can't hear them on the hopes they will put you in the log, you might be a lidIf you use the DX cluster spot function comments as a way to send text messages back and forth with another ham, you might be a lidIf you use the DX cluster to spot yourself, you might be a lidIf you have your mic gain and compressor set maximum on your HF rig and other hams tell you they can hear the termites in your attic when you transmit, you might be a lidIf you try to start a rag chew with a rare DX station while dozens and dozens of hams wait to work them, you might be a lidIf you have worked the rare DX station on the same band yesterday and feel obligated to work them again to "just to say hi", you might be a lidIf you failed the personal hygiene class in school and folks are always moving up wind of you, you might be a lidIf you like to set your HT volume to 11 (because 10 isn't enough) and then walk around with it blasting, you might be a lid

LID = licensed idiotLID = an op. who fails to listen to such a degree that they might as well have put a lid over their speaker

Our club recently had a presentation on the history of radio telegraphy.The presenter claims that the term "LID" originates from before radio. It refers to marginal telegraph operators who put a can "lid" on top of the sounder to amplify the clicks and clacks.Of coarse, if one walked into an office and saw such hokey setup, you might think that they were unprofessional.

Copyright 2000-2015 eHam.net, LLC
eHam.net is a community web site for amateur (ham) radio operators around the world.
Contact the site with comments or questions.
WEBMASTER@EHAM.NETSite Privacy Statement